This plan struck me as odd, as it was so clearly - to me, anyway - entrapment to arrest anyone buying or selling there. Yet only Bodie gets off? Even the greenest public defenders would have known this was a defense, especially with their clients protesting to them that it was designated as an arrest-free zone.
shareIt was more of a case where time ran out on Hamsterdam. The whole arrest-free zone idea was Major Colvin's. But, Colvin was later forced out once his superiors discovered what he had done. Therefore, what happened to Hamsterdam was no longer his call. When Colvin was forced to retire, the powers that be then decided that Hamsterdam's time was up, making it no longer an arrest-free zone. However, those buying and selling there had no idea. They probably would not be able to use entrapment as a defense, seeing as how Colvin's whole idea was illegal from the start anyway.
"There is no reason to bring every cotton pickin book you own into this dadburn gym!"-Fall 1987
OK, thanks. For some reason I thought Colvin had convinced - I can't think of the supervisor's name! - to go along with the plan by assuring him that they'd ultimately bust everybody in H., so I wondered not only about lawyers claiming entrapment as a defense, but the cops not seeming to have it in mind as a problem all along. However, I should have conducted a little more research; my bad!
"(Entrapment) prohibits a conviction when the defendant can show that he had no original intent to commit a crime, and did so only because law enforcement agents persuaded or coerced him. Law enforcement can provide opportunities for suspected criminals to commit crimes (through undercover operations or stings, for example) and then charge the offender, but police cannot 'manufacture crime.'"
-criminaldefenselawyer.com
We never really find out what happens to all the other perps since other than Bodie they weren't involved in the story but they never really cared about what happened after the arrests the whole thing was just a show to satisfy the press
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